


and in the end

by jeeno2



Series: and in the end [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gendry is a Baratheon, Happy Ending, Light Angst, Oral Sex, Season/Series 08, Season/Series 08 Spoilers, no one dies on my watch y'all, the battle of winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-01-15 23:37:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18509407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: “I don’t want to be your lady,” she says again. “All I ever wanted was to be your family.”In the end, Gendry decides it’s a compromise he can live with.----------------(Or: Five times Gendry Waters is an idiot and the one time he figures things out.)





	1. surprise

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing this because I really don't trust the show to give these two the ending they deserve. And the show is almost over, meaning if I'm ever going to do this, the time is now.
> 
> My initial plan was to post one short chapter/ficlet in this series after each episode of Season 8. Because at first, I'd expected I'd have to piece Gendrya interactions together from tiny little morsels D&D sprinkled throughout the episodes. But then forge!sex happened (!!!!) and my plans for this had to change. And now I expect I'll complete this story well in advance of S8 wrapping.

**One**

* * *

 

When Arya Stark walks into Winterfell's forge, Gendry is so flustered by her unexpected appearance he nearly drops Clegane’s axe.

He should have expected her to show up here, of course. Yes, it’s been years since they last saw each other. Years, and a lifetime ago since they were children together, hiding from Cersei Lannister’s gold cloaks and trading insults. But if there’s one thing Gendry has learned in his twenty-five years it’s that the core of a person--what makes them _them_ \--never really changes. No matter how much other things change, and no matter how much time passes.

And so he really should have known that the fierce, incorrigible girl he knew back when he was still an idiot boy himself would find her way here once she learned he’d arrived at Winterfell.

Gendry is relieved and terrified in equal measure when Clegane leaves the forge with his new dragonglass axe in tow. Leaving the two of them alone.

“Hello,” she says from the doorway.

She may look different--her hair is long; there are small lines at the corners of her eyes and lips that definitely weren’t there before--but her clear, strong voice hasn’t changed at all.

He would recognize it anywhere. Would recognize _her_ anywhere. Even after all this time.

She gives him a small smile. He swallows, his tongue suddenly too thick for his mouth.

She looks good. Older. He looks older too, he knows that, and really he shouldn’t be so _surprised_ that she looks older because for god’s sake it’s been years. But he is surprised, all the same. The girl he used to have to bend down to trade punches with now comes up to his chin, and has traded in her twiggy, boylike frame for a young woman’s gentle curves.

And...

And. It’s just… surprising, is all.

But then, Arya Stark always has had a knack for surprising him.  

“You look good, too,” she says. She looks serious. Like she means it. She smiles again, even broader this time. A smile that reaches her eyes.

Seeing her here, smiling at him like this…

It makes his stomach do a strange sort of flip that it hasn’t done in a very long time.

And that’s a problem.

Because while a lot of things are different now--while the whole world has gone straight to hell, and they’re right in the middle of an almost certainly unwinnable war--Arya Stark is still who she is and he is still who _he_ is and this fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach won’t do at all.

Gendry is grateful that they’re in the forge right now because it gives him an excuse to turn his back on her and walk away. There are, after all, things he must attend to here. Important things.

But Arya Stark came here with a purpose. Of course she has. And she won’t be deterred.

She won’t let him walk away from her this time.

“Can you make this?” She thrusts a scrap of parchment at him. He looks down and sees a intricately-sketched, two-pronged weapon unlike anything he’s ever seen.

Her gloved hand is so… close. Of course it would be, she’s _showing_ him something, but the proximity of her hand to his arm…

It makes him stupid, all the same.

Some things never change.

Gendry doesn’t answer her question about whether or not he can make the weapon (although he can, of _course_ he can, he was one of the best blacksmiths in Kings Landing when he left with Davos).

Instead, he falls back into old, familiar patterns.

He teases her.

He asks: "What do you need this for?" even though _everyone_ needs new weapons now so  _of course_  she needs one too. He calls her “m’lady,” because he knows she hates it, and tells her she’s just like all the other rich girls, unable to keep the smile off his face as he says it no matter how hard he tries.

But she has the last laugh. As always.

“You don’t know any other rich girls.”

He grins at her like the stupid fool he is as she saunters away, a smile playing on her lips as she walks out of the room, looking back at him over her shoulder the entire time.

 

* * *

 

Gendry lies awake for hours that night, thinking of that strange new weapon Arya wants him to make.

He imagines her holding it in her small, delicate hands. Wielding it. Arya knew exactly what she wanted from him when she came here tonight, and he can’t help but wonder if she’s had a lot of occasions to fight, a lot of _need_ for weapons, these past few years. He figures she probably has. They’ve been terrible years, for everyone in the Seven Kingdoms, and although Arya is highborn, that schematic she showed him was impeccably drawn and---

\--and, he decides, she almost certainly did not escape the horrors of the past few years unscathed.

He wonders, in spite of himself, if there had been anyone with her to help her fight, when fighting was necessary. Someone bigger. Stronger. Someone who could take care of her while _he_ was--

No. No. He finds he doesn’t like the thought of that at all.

Sleep remains elusive for Gendry until dawn, despite his fatigue.

(He'll make that weapon for her, maybe even ask her where the past few years have taken her. 

If she'll allow it.

Because in truth, he'd give anything to know.)


	2. morning after; night before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so thrown by Gendrya becoming canon (!!!!) that I wrote, and posted, the forge sex we didn’t get on the show  
> [as a separate one-shot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560728%22rel=%22nofollow%22)  
> before I realized I ACTUALLY should have posted it here as chapter 2.
> 
> SO. For the ACTUAL forge sex I urge you to go to the above link. It’s part of this story’s universe and should be viewed as an honorary chapter of this fic. This chapter you’re about to read here is the morning after. Apologies for these organizational challenges. :)

**Two**

* * *

 

Arya is nearly asleep again, head cradled gently against Gendry’s chest, when he speaks, startling her fully awake.

“At first, I thought you’d just come over here to yell at me.” He laughs a little under his breath. “Last night, I mean.”

The gentle, soothing rumble of Gendry’s low voice beneath her ear is pleasant, and she’d rather just lie here in his arms, content and drowsy, than have this conversation. But they've already lain here too long, Winterfell’s battle horns will be sounding at any moment, and--

She tilts her chin, and sees he’s looking down at her, blue eyes guarded but expectant.

She sighs. Closes her eyes.

She supposes they need to do this now.

Slowly, she rolls over until she’s facing him and their bodies are flush. She winces a little at the way the movement flares the faint, lingering soreness between her legs. The dim light streaming in through the forge’s single window casts long shadows over his face, making him look much older. Giving Arya glimpses of the man he will someday become if he’s lucky enough to live through the day.

She leans in and presses a lingering kiss to his lips. The same lips that kissed her breathless just a few hours ago, and brought her pleasure unlike anything she had ever known when he trailed them down her body. Pressed them between her legs.

Gendry hums his contentment, wrapping his strong arms around her and pulling her even closer. His cock is already straining, hard against her belly, again, despite the fact that Arya spent the better part of the night touching him there.

“I didn’t just come over to yell at you,” she whispers.

He knows that, of course. He must know that now. But his eyes are still guarded, and they regard her carefully as she tries to find the right words to explain.

But Arya has always been much better suited to actions than words. And so she rolls him onto his back and straddles him, the way she’d done when she initiated all of this last night. The furs she’d been sleeping under slide off her shoulders and down to the bed, leaving her body bare. His eyes drop right to her breasts, and she has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at how predictable he is.

How very much  _hers_ he is.

His large hands slide up her slim body until he is covering them. The fire in the forge’s hearth must have gone out overnight, and the air in here is bitterly cold. It makes her nipples pebble up beneath his palms--and when he squeezes her there, gently, it feels a little like her heart is being ripped in two.

“Tell me,” he murmurs, hoarse. It sounds a little like begging. He’s hard as a rock beneath her and she knows, now, exactly what that means. What he’s thinking. What he wants. But Gendry keeps his hips beneath her perfectly still, eyes riveted on her face like she holds the answers to every question he’s ever had.

Arya moves her hips a little, rubbing against his erection until his eyes flutter closed. Wanting more than anything to make this moment last, and last, and _last_ \--until it has to end.

“I came here because I wanted to have this with you,” she tells him. It’s the truth. Who else in this godforsaken world could she have done this with? There is no one else she knows this well, who she _trusts_ this well. “Before it was too late.”

He huffs out a long breath, eyes full of an emotion Arya cannot name. She leans forward until their foreheads are touching, and she kisses his mouth, trying to memorize every last detail about him until their time together is spent. The softness of his dark hair between her fingers. The way his strong body feels beneath hers.

“And also,” she adds, in a much louder voice, hiding a smile. “I wanted my weapon.”  

He snorts at that, but his shoulders slump a little with something that looks a lot to Arya like relief.

One corner of his mouth quirks up into a small smile.

“And now you have it, m’lady.”

She punches his shoulder at that, _hard._

“Don’t call me that,” she says, laughing, against his lips.

“Whatever you say,” he breathes. And then quick as a flash, he flips them again, pinning her to the bed. She allows it. She reaches up, and cards her fingers through his course, dark hair. “I’ll always do whatever you say.”

And then he kisses her, and kisses her, and _kisses_ her, until Winterfell’s war horns go off at last.


	3. morning after, redux

**Three**

* * *

 

The war horns coming from the top of Winterfell’s ramparts sound far too soon.

Arya moves away from him, slides out of his arms, quick as a flash. Before he even has a chance to process that it’s happening.

It had to happen, of course. This moment was inevitable. He knew from the minute she took him to bed last night that it was always going to play out exactly like this in the end.

Even so, Gendry cannot help the way his heart crashes painfully against his ribcage as he watches her dress in the cold light of day. Arya’s movements are quick, efficient, as she dons her underthings, her shirt. Her leathers. The way she moves now stands in sharp contrast to the leisurely way they’d just been kissing and touching each other, as they’d pretended, for just a few moments, that they had all the time in the world.

A lump rises in his throat and tears prick the corners of his eyes. He dashes them away with the back of his hand before they can fall.

There’s no time for any of that now.

“Arya.”

His voice sounds hoarse to his own ears, and he winces at just how _green_ she must find him, even after everything they’ve just done to one another. Arya stops abruptly, head snapping up to look at him. Her eyes are ferocious, cold. She’s already preparing for the battle ahead, he can see that now, and Gendry shivers, the hard look she’s giving him providing yet another brief insight into what the past several years must have been like for her.

It’s not enough, of course, these brief glimpses. He wants to _know_ what she’s been through. He wants her to tell him who hurt her, and who gave her those scars.

He wants her to tell him everything.

He wants them to both live long enough that she’ll have the chance to do it.

“What is it?” Arya’s tone is abrupt, impatient, but not unkind. She resumes getting ready, bending down to pull on her thick woolen socks. To lace up her boots.

“I--” He trails off, biting his lip.

No. _No_.

Words--if he even had words for what he’s feeling right now--are not enough.

So instead of telling her what he’s thinking he pushes back the furs he’d been sleeping beneath and gets out of bed. He moves over to where she’s standing and carefully pulls her into his arms.

“What is it?” she asks again. More quietly this time. She’s trembling a little and, _gods_ , what he wouldn’t give for even ten more minutes with her.

He sighs, and presses gentle kisses to the top of her head. Her cheeks. She melts against him in response. It feels like his heart is breaking.

“I’ll find you,” he promises her, voice shaking with the strength of his conviction. “I’ll find you, after. And then, and then we’ll--”

 _Talk_ , he doesn’t say. _Talk, and go for long walks where we get to know one another again. I’ll build you a house, if you want. Or we can stay here in Winterfell. Anything you want, it’s yours. I promise. Just please, please go the crypts. Stay out of the fighting. Please just… stay alive._

“And then we’ll... we’ll see each other again,” he finishes, lamely, instead.

At that, Arya pulls back and shoots him a quizzical look. .

“Stupid,” she murmurs. Her voice sounds hoarse now, too. Her eyes are glassy. “You’re stupid.”

But her gaze, her tone, is so soft, that the words sound like an endearment. And she kisses him again, right on the mouth, _hard,_ bruisingly, before she pulls away.

“We have to go,” she says. She sniffles, and wipes at her nose with the back of her sleeve. A final show of vulnerability before her war mask is back in place.

Gendry nods in silent agreement, not trusting his voice not to give him away.


	4. The Battle of Winterfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will I ever be over Episode 8.03? Not likely.

**Four**

* * *

 

During the Battle of Winterfell, Gendry never stops looking for her.

Not even when it’s time to retreat.

The men he is fighting with are shouting at him to move, their fear and their desperation written all over their faces. But still Gendry hesitates, his sluggish body a beat too slow. Unwilling, in spite of everything, to move him from where he stands, rooted to the spot.

The other men have to resort to shoving him, pushing at him, until at last he stops glancing over his shoulder at the ramparts where Arya was standing at the beginning of this nightmare and finally follows them inside.

Gendry’s strong arms, his heavy dragonglass hammer, never stop swinging. Not for an instant. But even as he retreats into the castle with the others--even as he fights for his life, and for the lives of all the men, women, and children in Westeros--even still his eyes keep roving endlessly over the burned-out shell of Winterfell. The place he’d dreamed of, yearned, for, for years.

Arya Stark’s home.

She’d wanted him to come home with her, once. And now, he hopes to see some sign,  _any_ sign, that the impossible has happened. That somehow, against all odds, she has survived.

Gendry stays vigilant as he fights, despite nearly crippling fatigue and the constant ache in his shoulders. That pain--his injuries; his heartbeat, hammering hard against his ribcage--are welcome reminders he is still alive.

(The night air in the north is frigid, but the memory of Arya’s breath on his neck--hot against his skin, and sweet with promise--keeps him warm.)

 

* * *

 

In the end, she’s the one to find him.

The battle is over, somehow. He doesn't know how. And he doesn't care. All he knows is one minute there’d been seven wights surrounding him, reaching for him, clawing at his arms with fingernails sharp as razors; and the next, they all fell to the ground. Lifeless. Just as the gods intended them to be.

He’s stumbling, exhausted, into the Great Hall with all the others when Arya must see him. All he can think of, all he can  _see_ in his mind’s eye in that moment, are food, and a raging fire, a soft bed--

And then the next moment Arya’s slender arms come around him, pulling him close, almost before he even realizes she’s there.

“It’s you,” Arya says, breathlessly, on a dry laugh. He looks down at her and sees she’s at least as caked with dirt and dried blood as he is. She smells of blood, of death and decay, and in her grey eyes he can see the remnants of the same blind terror that had had him in his grasp throughout this terrible night.

He knows Arya is strong. A fighter. And fearless. Braver, in fact, than any man he has ever known. And yet the idea that she probably saw as much fighting tonight as he did fills him with so much misplaced rage and protective fury it takes all his remaining strength not to drive his fist straight into a wall.

“Yeah. It’s me,” he says. His voice is trembling. He bites his lip, trying to calm himself. “And… and  _you’re_ still alive.”

He winces at that, because what a stupid thing to say. Of  _course_ she’s still alive, she wouldn’t be  _standing_ here if she weren’t still alive, and really, how stupid must she think he is?  But twelve hours ago, when they were tangled up together in his bed, he thought that neither one of them would still be here right now. There wasn’t even time for a proper goodbye when the war horns sounded, and Gendry hadn’t even let himself  _imagine_ they might both be here right now, together, after the end of the war, her arms around him, looking up into his eyes like he’s the only person in this room she really wants to see.

If Arya thinks him stupid, though, she shows no sign of it. She only rolls her eyes at him and laughs again, the sound of it sharp and bright, standing out against the din of the Great Hall. He wants, desperately, to kiss her--right here, right now, the rest of the people assembled here be damned--and show her exactly how grateful he is they’re both still alive.

But she beats him to that, too.

“Kiss me,” she murmurs, fiercely. Her voice is hoarse but insistent, and there’s a steely determination in her gaze Gendry wouldn’t be able to resist even if he tried.

He beams down at her, unable to believe this isn’t some kind of fever dream, and does exactly as his lady commands.

 


	5. after the long night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which this ficlet series earns its Explicit rating.

**Five**

* * *

“Arya. Wait.”

Her hands are already working on the ties at the front of Gendry’s breeches, but at his words, she stills her movements.

She looks up at him from her position, kneeling on the floor of the forge between his legs.

“Why?”

He swallows. His shirt came off some time ago. So did hers. He’s already breathing hard, and the look he’s giving her right now tells her this is not an argument he’s going to win.

“What if… what if someone walks in?”

 _What if your family_ _walks in?_ , he doesn’t say. But Arya knows that’s what he means.

She shrugs. “They’re busy.” Which is true enough. She goes back to undoing his pants, a trickier job than she’d thought it would be. Maybe because her hands are shaking a little, too. Either way, Jon, and Sansa, and everyone else is so exhausted, so completely overcome with relief that they survived the night there is no way they’ll be heading to the forge right now, or even notice she’s snuck away from the others. “Everyone’s too happy to be alive to go searching for me. But even if they see us, who cares?”

That seems to upset him. He fidgets a little in his seat. “Arya, I--”

But then her hand finds its way inside his clothes and she takes him firmly in hand. Whatever he’d been about to say dies on his tongue. He makes a strange, choked noise in the back of his throat as he seems to realize what she’s about to do to him. What she’s _already_ doing to him. He stares down at her, his bright eyes wide in disbelief.

“Arya,” he gasps. She moves her hand, firmly. The way he showed her he likes, the one time they were together. Up, and then back down again, with a little twist at the base. Gendry pulses, hot and hard against her palm.

She squeezes. He whimpers.

“Arya,” he gasps. “ _Arya_. You don’t have to…”

She looks up at him. His chest is heaving.

“Do you not want me to?”

She pulls him out of his pants and Gendry squeezes his eyes tightly shut. Arya leans forward and licks a long, deliberate stripe along him from base to tip.

“Fuck,” he hisses. “ _Yes_. Yes. I do.”

“Good,” she says, squeezing him again. “I want to, too.”

It’s the truth. The last time they were together was frantic. Rushed. But now that they’re _alive_ , and here, and they have all the time in the world, she wants to take her time with him. She wants to learn all the different ways she can make him fall apart.

“Tell me what you like, when you touch yourself.” Arya doesn’t _really_ know what she’s doing, and although Gendry’s reaction to what they did the other night suggests her lack of experience probably doesn’t matter she wants to be prepared.

Either way, the noise Gendry makes in response– if it can even really be called a response – is unintelligible.

But he doesn’t stop her. Doesn’t tell her to stop touching him.

Instead, he begins to thrust, just a little, up into her hand. His legs tremble beneath her as he fights not to thrust even harder. And when she leans forward again, and takes him into her mouth, his hands slide down to the ends of the chair he is sitting in, gripping them so tightly his knuckles go white.

Seeing him like this—desperate; uncontrolled, and hungry for her touch—and knowing she is the reason he is in this state makes Arya want him in a way she has never wanted another person before. She rubs her legs together without realizing she’s doing it as she bobs her head slowly, letting the full length of him slide in and out of her mouth at an almost leisurely pace, never taking her eyes from his face as she moves, as she takes him as far back into her throat as she can without gagging. The drops of his spend on her tongue taste strange--a little salty--but not bad. She finds she likes it. All of it. The taste of him. His unique scent. The feel of his cock, smooth against her tongue, pulsing hotly against the inside of her cheek.

She can tell he wants to watch as she does this to him. And at first, he does. But it’s not long before his eyes flutter closed and he throws his head back against the back of the chair, his jaw slack as he moans, helpless.

When his breathing suddenly goes ragged and she feels his balls pulling up tight against his body she knows he’s close.

She pulls back with an audible pop and looks up at him.

“ _Arya_ ,” he groans. Her name on his lips sounds like begging.

“Shh,” she says. She kisses the tip of his cock, very gently. He cries out at the contact, digging his fingertips even harder into the armrests. “You want me to keep going?”

“Fuck, _yes_ , Arya, but–”

She kisses his tip again, and then again with an open mouth, swirling her tongue along his slit and then around him once, twice, before pulling off again and patting his thighs.

“Arya,” he groans again. The tendons in his neck are standing out in sharp relief and he’s breathing like he’s just run a great distance. He stares down at her, eyes dark and hungrier than she’s ever seen them. It does something to her, seeing him so completely undone. She wants to make him come undone again and again. Just like this. “Don’t stop. _Please_.”

Their eyes meet, and the desperate look she sees in his tells Arya he’s going to come in about five seconds whether she helps him get there or not.

“Okay,” she says, nodding, reveling in the new, strange, delicious sort of power she has over him.

She wraps one hand around the base of his shaft and takes him into her mouth again, more forcefully this time. She sucks him hard, purposefully, as she moves, as she works him, and she adds a little twist of her hand in time with every sweep of her tongue.

He comes seconds later with a forceful thrust into her mouth and a shout of her name, his whole body going rigid beneath her as he pulses, his come sliding down her throat as she drinks him down.

When his entire body goes limp in his chair, Arya slides off him, regarding him from her perch on the floor.

For a very long moment neither of them say anything. Arya listens to the rhythm of his breathing, slowing down now that he’s come.

He cracks one eye open and looks down at her.

He clears his throat.

“Arya,” he says. He chuckles, sounding dazed. And bone-weary. “That was…”

He trails off, apparently unable to find the words he’s looking for. But Arya thinks he knows what he means.

He has a dazed, blissful look of gratitude on his face as his eyes drift closed.

 _Beautiful_ , she thinks, suddenly, as she watches him.

He is beautiful.

“Yeah,” Arya says, agreeing with him. She pats his knee. “It was.”

“Mmm.”

“Yes. Well.” She clears her throat. “Could you return the favor, please?” Because there’s no one looking for them right now, they’re very much _not_ dead, and now Arya wants to know what it feels to have _his_ mouth between _her_ legs.

He opens his eyes, and the look of utter adoration she sees in them winds the coil of need in the pit of her belly even tighter.

He smiles at her, and laughs again, delirious.

He nods.

“C’mere,” he whispers.

She does.

 

 


	6. At Storms End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still reeling from Episode 4. Here have a fluffy kissy fix-it. God knows D&D won't give us (or them) what we deserve.

\+ 1

* * *

 

 

“Ser Davos told me I’d find you here.”

At the sound of Arya’s voice, Gendry sets down the blade he’d been sharpening and closes his eyes.

He’s imagined this moment--or one just like it--so many times in the weeks since his arrival at Storm’s End he’s lost count. But now that the Battle for Kings’ Landing is over and Arya is finally here, Gendry can’t remember any of the speeches and pretty words he’s rehearsed just in case he ever saw her again.

His heart pounding in his ears, Gendry sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose between dirty fingers.

“Hi,” he says, very quietly. Trying to stay calm.

“Hi yourself.” A pause. “You still work in a forge? Even though you’re Lord Baratheon now?”

He turns towards her, and she’s just… _standing_ there, in the doorway to his new forge, leaning against the doorjamb with such a casual, effortless grace he wants to fall to his knees for her all over again. Arya’s hair is loose, down around her shoulders, and to his relief her injuries from the Battle of Winterfell seem to be mostly healed. The ones he can see, anyway.

That must mean she wasn’t seriously hurt during the most recent battle. That killing Cersei, and installing Daenerys as the Realm’s new queen, did not take anything more from Arya than what she’d already lost.

“Yes. I still work in a forge,” Gendry admits, trying to regain some composure. It’s tricky work. “Sometimes, anyway. The lord’s life… it doesn’t really suit me.” He shrugs. “Hammering steel is the only thing that’s ever made any kind of sense.”

Arya nods quietly. Sympathetically.

“You look… good,” she says. She gives him a small, knowing smile, and it takes him a moment but eventually he remembers their first conversation at Winterfell, back when he’d been in the forge making those dragonglass axes, and she’d turned his entire fucking world upside down with one look.

He’d been so stunned that day by how much she’d grown. By her spirit, and her fierce, uncommon beauty. By her everything.

He still is stunned. Here, now, even though he is now a lord and technically, finally, her equal. He thinks he could live a thousand lifetimes and never stop being stunned by Arya Stark.

“Thanks,” Gendry says, nodding. Trying, and mostly failing, to return her smile. “So do you.”

She takes a step inside the forge (no visible injuries on her hands or her arms) and then another (her eyes are so clear and so bright, even here in this dimly-lit room). For his part Gendry stands rooted to the spot by the whetstone, hands on his hips as he waits for whatever is about to happen to finally happen.

“I wondered if we could talk,” Arya says. Her voice wavers a little, and Gendry can’t help but wonder if she’s nervous right now. He can’t say why, but the idea that she might be makes him feel a little better. His own stomach is a tangled knot of nerves, and he’s so worried he might do the wrong thing, scare her off again, he can hardly see straight.

“Of course we can talk,” he says. He leans back against a wall and folds his arms across his chest. “What… what do you want to talk about?” He asks it casually, as though there could be any number of reasons why Arya might come here to Storm’s End right after the battle at Kings’ Landing instead of going straight back home to Winterfell.

At his question Arya moves towards him, never taking her eyes from his face. When she reaches him she gently, gently cups his face in both hands. The feel of her fingertips against his skin after weeks spent wondering if he’d ever see her again is almost too much, and he has to close his eyes against the wave of emotion rising up inside so he doesn’t make a fool of himself in front of her all over again.

“This,” she answers him, on a whisper, before pressing her lips to his.

This kiss is not like the hurried, frantic kisses they shared the night before the Battle for Winterfell. And it isn’t like the sweet, painfully sad kisses she gave him the night she broke his heart. This kiss is honest, and open. It’s searching, yearning, the tip of her tongue darting out to trace the seam of his lips as she hums her contentment. Gendry wraps his arms around her slender body as he opens his mouth to her, pulling her more closely into his embrace as she deepens the kiss.

“I won’t be anyone’s lady,” she murmurs against his lips when she pulls back. She’s breathing hard now and her eyes are still closed, and Gendry takes the opportunity to study, to memorize, every freckle and every line on her unforgettable face. “Not ever.”

He nods fervently. “I know,” he says, very quickly. He kisses her forehead, her cheeks. The tip of her nose. “I know, Arya. I phrased that badly. So badly. I’ve wished I could take it back a thousand times. I just--”

She leans forward and kisses him again, cutting him off. He lets her, and tightens his hold around her until she’s flush against the front of his body. Her hands start to wander, trailing down his chest until her palms are covering his heart. She presses a little, and he wonders if she can feel how much it beats just for her.

When they pull apart again, she rests her forehead against his.

“I don’t want to be your lady,” she says again. “All I ever wanted was to be your _family_.”

In the end, Gendry decides it’s a compromise he can live with.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this series! I plan to write additional Gendrya one-shots as the mood strikes over the next few weeks. So, stay tuned. <3

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on twitter at [jeenonamit](https://twitter.com/jeenonamit/)  
> I'm also on tumblr at [jeeno2](https://jeeno2.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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